Friday, August 10, 2012

friday fun times: marin century recap

so a lot's been going on this week, but not as much as what happened on saturday. we rode 106 miles again y'all! i felt better and stronger this year. weather was also substantially cooler than i recall from the past couple of years.

we kept running into our friend, sue, who i think summed up the whole experience quite nicely. she gave us permission to use her post.

My lessons from today:

1) No matter how much you inwardly make a deal with yourself during a hill-climb that you will throw in the towel and take a SAG wagon back to the start, they are inevitably nowhere around until you get to the top of a hill and are already feeling fine again.

going up a hill early in the am.

2) During the middle of the century ride, when the crowd has thinned out, feel free say "Hey Cow!" and "Hey Goat!" and "Hey Peep!" to cows and goats and birds that peep. If a roadie rides past you while you are doing this, he won't notice... he won't even look at you, because he is very serious.

serious early riser roadies.

3) The grass, for cows, seems always greener (or tastier) on the other side of the fence.

top of marshall wall

4) Skunks smell pretty bad when they are hit by cars and their guts are showing.

5) It's not a great thing to mouth breathe when you ride through a cloud of gnats.

6) Great friends will encourage you and applaud you and cheer you on no matter how long you are taking - thanks, Sean, Tracy, Bill, and Melyssa! You are all awesome.

7) Drink something caffeinated in the morning before one of these. Then have some caffeinated things with you - GU is really good. OR... you can experience some super sweet male chivalry when a guy gives you one randomly.

8) The last 10 miles of a century somehow take longer than any ten miles you have ever ridden in your life. And no, saying loudly "WHEN THE HELL IS THIS GOING TO END??!?!" is not going to make it end.

9) No matter how much mental chatter you have going on about quitting a thing like this (if you are not injured, etc), it is generally awesome to finish it. And in this case, some of the easier miles were at the end. By the time I could have quit, I had actually already ridden through all the hard stuff.

10) It is a great thing to ride through the country and stop every once in a while and hear how quiet it is.

11) It is also a great thing to ride by a pasture where several cows have gathered and one leans back his head and lets loose his "MIGHTY YOWP" - Mooooooo

Thanks for the tips. I'll be doing my first century in afew weeks time. At least I wont have to worry about skunk road kill stench ;-)D'oh I always get busted talking to farm animals when guys pass me on their serious speedster bikes. And it's true, they never seem to notice - must be in 'The Zone'.

The Marin Century sounds amazing! All the animals (farm and wild) and beautiful blonde and green California hills. I'm doing my second NYC Century in September and the landscape is mainly buildings, then beach, then forest, then back to buildings. It's beautiful in it's own way, I guess. The Montauk Century I did in June was mainly streets, fancy houses, long beach road with massive headwinds, then, if you're me, fall over and tear up your arm on said beach road, and ride for twenty more miles, then do 12 miles of insane hills, each one bigger than the next, then finish and hate the world. Yikes, I think I just became a comment troll...sorry!